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Welcome to Page 2! Let's get to work ...
Here is a photo of knitting the leg portion of the sock. This is taken mid-round, that is with stitches on all four needles.
I don't know if this will clarify things, or confuse you more! LOL Here's a photo with lines drawn to represent the placement of each needle:
Now you are ready to arrange the stitches on the needles so that you can work the heel flap. A lot of patterns say that you should work so many stitches from one needle onto the other, adjust the remaining stitches, break the yarn, etc. etc. Bah! I think that's just silly. Here's what I do: After finishing a round, I take the required number of stitches from the needle I just finished working on. I count stitches backward off that last needle, and take whatever more stitches I need from the second needle to get my 50%. The ratio is most always 50% of total stitches for the heel flap, then you arrange the remaining 50% on the two remaining needles, so 25% on those two needles.
If you look at the photo above, I am ready to start Row 1 of my heel flap. Your working needle is the heel flap needle. You will be knitting back and forth on this needle. Your first row is a purl row. Follow your pattern, and work the heel flap. I favour a flap that has "slip 1/knit 1 repeated" for the knit-side rows, and "slip 1, purl across" for the purl side rows. Work the flap to the required length.
Here we have the heel flap completed. The next step is to "turn" the heel; that is, to shape the heel with a series of "short rows". When I first tried to knit socks, what messed me up about doing the heel was the fact that as I worked each row of the shaping, there were stitches still left on the needle (i.e. I didn't work to the end of the row). "Forget about it!" Don't worry, because it all works out in the end! Follow your pattern, work the stitches and when it says "turn", you do just that, turn the work so the opposite side of the flap is facing you. Easy! After "turning" your heel should look something like this (the little white lines show the direction of the shaping):
Well, now, that wasn't so hard, was it!?
Click here to go onto the gusset!
Copyright © 2000 by Terri Lee Royea. All Rights Reserved. Images, text and html coding belong to the author. These pages are intended for your own personal use and may be distributed FREELY as long as proper attribution is made.
